


Samhain's Tidings

by Kako_Pumpkin



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Mentions Other Guardians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 07:53:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/583026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kako_Pumpkin/pseuds/Kako_Pumpkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freed from his banishment on the eve of all hallows, Pitch finds himself an unwilling conversation partner with the Banshee Queen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Samhain's Tidings

**Author's Note:**

> Takes places after the end of the movie, or, for nitpickers, a few months after the end of the movie. Short but not all that sweet; I hope to have more of these in a proper story, but we'll see how college work goes :-) For now, consider this a one-shot standalone.
> 
> I am still wrangling with my understanding of his character (despite having watched the movie three times), so any comments or criticism would be greatly appreciated! Please enjoy :-)

There was a smothering darkness that didn’t belong to him, screams in his ears that he didn’t cause and teeth – teeth biting, teeth swallowing, teeth tearing him into nothing, less than nothing, yellow eyes that knew his every weakness and unholy _fear –_

“I am _Pitch Black,”_ he said, he shouted, he begged, but it seemed to mean nothing at all to the nightmares, who were filled with edges and ropes and _fear_ and there was nothing but _fear -_

“I am _Pitch Black,”_ he insisted and finally he knew annoyance and fury at being ignored and wounded by teeth and he knew what these were and what was happening – these weren’t nightmares they were his _Nightmares_ and _how dare they, he was_ ** _Pitch Black_ ** and suddenly _they_ were the ones screaming and scattering and being torn apart and he had a sense of going up and up, unseeing and unknowing of his destination, seeking only darkness and freedom and revenge –

When his eyes finally opened they were full of blinding light from the moon and he couldn’t help himself - he bared his teeth at it, all anger and frustration as he rolled over to his side and clenched the damp grass between his fingers.

"Are you happy now, you interferer?” he spat at the ground. The moonlight seeped through his skin, irritating and filling him with fury. “I’m once again the beaten dog, forced back into the shadows as I was those hundreds of years ago. Why bother to even _pretend_ that you’re merely an overseer of the world, when such preferential treatment goes unchecked?”

There was a murmur to his left and he jumped to his feet, eyes darting through the darkness. Seeing the source, they narrowed in pleasure as they took in the sight of the Banshee Queen sitting on a craggy rock, the edges of her hair and dress – grey, green and black – dipping into a perfectly still pond. He was far away from that ghastly hole they had tried to seal him in, then; though, how long had he been down there this time?

“It isn’t preferential treatment,” she said. Her voice came in whispers from nowhere and everywhere, her mouth unopened. It would herald vast misfortune were the Banshee Queen to speak even a single word, and so her magic gave her other means. He scoffed, mouth twisted.

“Oh – isn’t it?” His arms spread out wide, inviting her to speak. “Tell me that it isn’t true – that those bringers of _hope_ and _joy_ aren’t allowed free reign while the less desirable of us are left to wither and fade away into nothingness!”

There was an echoing sigh and the Banshee Queen unfolded herself, facing him entirely. Her face was filled with shadows and dark beauty, but there were thousands of years of death and grief in the bones beneath the skin. “Have you withered?” she asked. “Have you faded away?”

“I am less than ignored, Banshee!” he snapped. Worn from defeat and still raw with overcoming his Nightmares, his mouth formed a soundless snarl of anger. “Surely you can understand where I’m coming from? To have all that power, only for it to be stripped away by hope and wonder – bah!”

“Pure fear is unsustainable, Pitch Black,” she said. “Certainly I can understand the desire to be seen and heard. All of us, with our dark centres, can understand. But your desires, left untamed, would destroy everything in the end.”

His let his eyes roll as he turned away. “Oh, really? What is it you do again? Ah yes – sing a lovely song that scares people so badly they end up dying anyway. Talk about _unsustainability,_ Banshee Queen.”

“Shall I sing for you, then?” she said, her eyes suddenly filled with shimmering dark as her lashes fluttered down. He filled his smile with teeth.

“No, thank you,” he replied, bowing gracefully. “I’m quite all right for now.”

“For now,” she agreed, and drifted off her stone perch, her dress and hair curling and flowing in wisps behind her. He exhaled his amusement at her statement, stepping back away from the touch of the moon.

“So sorry to trouble you, O Wailing Woman,” he said, putting his bite back into his words. “I’ll be on my way, and shan’t bother you any longer.”

You’re hardly a bother to me, Bogeyman,” she replied. “Why not stay for Samhain?” His breath caught as he glanced around him, finally comprehending where he was. _Samhain –_ tonight? A festival of the dead, where all the doorways opened and dark things walked free from the shadows? Of course. He was standing in the middle of a fairy ring even; how amusing.

“I really don’t understand why you never claimed one of those celebrations…” His breath caught; her voice was right next to his ear.

“It always seemed a little crowded,” he said dryly, brushing off a tendril of her hair that caught on his shoulder. She chuckled; the sound was like a patch of ice-cold water seeping through his chest.

“Stingy Jack, Hwch ddu gwta, Muck Olla…and all those happy children, yes,” she said. “You never were one for compromising, King of Nightmares.”

“I was the _first,_ Wailing Woman.”

“But you aren’t the last; and it’s the evolution that’s counted in the end, isn’t it?”

“You are one to speak!” He turned to her, letting his power show, letting his shadows chase after her annoying little wisps of hair and cloth. “Stingy Jack? Hwch ddu gwta? _Muck Olla?_ Ha! The children don’t even know _your_ name and yet you still rattle off those faded nothings as though they meant anything? I am not the last, certainly, but at least I _have_ lasted; at least my name still rings in their minds! Even if I _am_ just a story, at least they tell stories of me! What are _you_ , Weeping Cleena, but a memory of a memory that no-one remembers at all?”

“They hear my keening in the valleys and the forests,” said the Banshee Queen, her eyes dark with burgeoning anger. “They know what I am, even if my name has not carried far. And they worship Stingy Jack, even though his name has changed. Hwch ddu gwta still exists, even if they cannot name the fear that chases their feet as they run home in the dark.”

“But they don’t know what you _are,”_ he insisted, smiling as he tasted her doubt. Her gaze was like steel, however; she had never been one to crack under any taunt he had thrown at her over the years. “They would be nothing – _nothing_ – without me! _I_ am the thing that creeps after the children’s’ feet; _I_ am the darkness drifting over their shoulder, _I_ am the filled-with-something-emptiness that follows them at night, _I_ am the –”

“Bogeyman,” she said. He stopped short at her interruption; his eyes narrowed with fury. She continued coolly; “My advice is simple. Change, or die out as a fairy tale.”

“Your _advice!”_ He dripped his words in venom and sent them to her, poisonous and stinging. “Oh, how lovely; how kind! Even the great Banshee Queen deigns to give little old me some kindly words!”

“Then perhaps,” said the great Banshee Queen, and this time she spoke and the words travelled deeper than any fear, colder than any death, stealing the breath and life from his bones and lungs, ringing like bells and dark promises. “I should amend my words. Not advice from Weeping Cleena, then, O Bogeyman. _A warning.”_

His eyes were filled with green and grey and black and this was nothing like fear – this was cold, hard, unforgiving certainty, inescapable and unrelenting –

_“You thought to steal from the Guardians, and so you did. But it was not only the Guardians you stole from, Pitch Black; O King of Nightmares, O Bogeyman.”_

Wisps, in his eyes and ears and mouth, wisps whispering.

“Consider sustainability,” they said, and then they were gone and he was left kneeling and strangling air through his lungs in the middle of a fairy ring, alone but for the moonlight.

 


End file.
